The danger is that after we conquer flies and mosquitoes, now we have to worry about the eye in the sky from big brother, little tiny assasinators and spy cameras. They already have tiny drones with cameras. Unless we can protect our rights, and not be invaded by insect robots, we can wind up in a far more horrible world than we wish.

So, this is a new day we're in, and it requires new laws to protect our rights. We have a right to privacy, and we certainly have a right not to be assassinated by nearly invisible robots. We don't have any rights liberty or persuit of happiness in a mad max world with insect drones.

U.S. Flying Drones Over Mexico

Posted by BananaFamine on March 16, 2011

The New York Times reports:

Stepping up its involvement in Mexico’s drug war, the Obama administration has begun sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks, according to American and Mexican officials.

The Pentagon began flying high-altitude, unarmed drones over Mexican skies last month, American military officials said, in hopes of collecting information to turn over to Mexican law enforcement agencies. Other administration officials said a Homeland Security drone helped Mexican authorities find several suspects linked to the Feb. 15 killing of Jaime Zapata, a United States Immigration and Customs EnforcementImmigration agent.

President Obama and his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, formally agreed to continue the surveillance flights during a White House meeting on March 3. The American assistance has been kept secret because of legal restrictions in Mexico and the heated political sensitivities there about sovereignty, the officials said.

Military Creates Cyborg

Insect Spies

Written by Chris

In the movies, cyborgs are almost always evil.

After creating insect spies, scientists plan to

invent the "fanborg": half human, half robot,

all nerd. Image by Bruno Girin

Generally they use their superior robot strength and intelligence to destroy us puny weaklings until a plucky flesh-and-blood human comes along and explodes their mind with a computer or knocks them into a volcano or something.

Apparently defense scientists do not heed the warnings of Hollywood because they’ve created the world’s first insect “cyborgs” for use as spies. The procedure seems more mad science than sober lab work, but it’s real. Scientists take insects, generally beetles and moths, which are still in the pupa stage of development. They then jam electrodes, power sources, and even tiny video cameras into these developing insects. As the insects grow the electronics are absorbed by their body, naturally incorporating into the insect. The implants send information back to be read by a computer.

The reason governments are choosing insects rather than making their own tiny robots is because powering them would require a large battery. Since the idea of these robots is to keep them as small as possible, a living insect wouldn’t required a huge power source. DARPA believes that the heat and mechanical power generated by the insects themselves as they move around “may be harnessed to power the microsystem payload” eliminating the need for batteries or other power systems.

DARPA also plans on implanting the control device into the insects while they are in the larva stage as the insect’s body goes through a renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs around foreign objects, including tiny (mechanical) structures that might be present.

The insects themselves don’t appear any different than a normal moth or beetle. Their only difference is that scientists will be able to control them and monitor whatever the insect sees.

Technology is being developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for military use. You might remember them for creating ARPAnet, a precursor to today’s internet.

This technology has several uses besides making you wonder whether the moths by your porch light are actually government spies for the rest of your life. DARPA plans to fly the insects into places like hostage situations or the barracks of enemy combatants.

The US military seems to really love turning animals into cyborgs because they’ve done it several times before. While the insects are probably going to be used for spies, other animals have been experimented on as “sniffers” for bombs or bodies. Rats have had electrodes connected to their brain to let scientists control their movements after they trained the animals to sniff for bodies and bombs. The military has done similar experiments on sharks. The animal’s famed ability to sniff out a drop of blood in a huge quantity of water also allows it to sniff out faint traces of chemicals.

If this project turns out to be a success, the military will have tiny living spies that can be used for information gathering purposes, to search out explosives, or to follow key targets without bringing any suspicion to themselves. This will also save the lives of millions of soldiers.